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"The Seduction of Lady Anne" from Shakespeare's King Richard III, was neat and short
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The Bard in brief A scene from "The Seduction of Lady Anne".
Before you could say, "Pass the Olive" it was all over. Lady Anne had been widowed, wooed and won at the Wallajah Room of the Connemara Hotel. Maybe that's the whole point of cocktail theatre. It fizzes and froths for a few instants so that you can wash it down in one gulp.
You have to credit "The Company Theatre Productions" of Mumbai for creating such a neat, bite-sized piece from such a tough uncompromising material. Shakespeare's Richard III is not only one of his more powerful plays, that presages the great tragedies that are to follow, it also wraps up a great deal of historical material. To reduce this torrent of information to a wee drop is no small feat. Kenn Philips, the director who has undertaken the task, was obviously fascinated by the psychological challenge of portraying so perverted a character as Richard the Humpback, as he was known, into the seducer of Anne, at the most vulnerable point of her life, just as she is mourning the murder of her husband, the King, and Richard's own brother. The playlet starts at this point.
To suggest the claustrophobic situation, the stage setting is devised in the form of a black cubicle, or box, out of black drapes, on the floor and sides, with a strip of red material at the back, the two actors, (Sheeba Chandha and Atul Kumar) also dressed in black. There are two candles burning in front of the stage that just about highlight the faces of the actors which appear like masks and a sword that is brandished off and on. Oddly enough, their hands were not made-up, so in the dark looked as if they belonged to some other people.
A victim's surrender
It suggests a "Black Sabbath" quality to the wooing of Anne. She turns from grief and loathing of the man who has destroyed her family to a kind of hypnotised acceptance. Philips has managed to bring out Shakespeare's brilliant understanding of what would be called today the willing acquiescence of a victim. Lady Anne walks into the arms of her tormentor. By making his Richard into a horrible mask with ugly warts Philips underlines the drama of her capitulation. Comparisons with the famous Lawrence Olivier film might be unfair. But by making Richard so hideous, the one aspect that is missing here is in the suggestion of Power being the most potent aphrodisiac. In Olivier's wooing of Anne, not only is there the seduction of power, there is the physical power in the words that he uses with such good effect. He woos Anne with his voice. Claire Bloom, as Anne, also suggests how her innocence itself is the goad to Richard's appetite.
Sheeba Chandha
This is where the production failed to create much of an impact. Being minimal need not become monotonous. If the team had managed to suggest some of the kingly aura that Richard commanded in the form of rich clothes, or jewels, or some of the simplicity of Anne's queenly grief, the piece would have been much more interesting. As it is, there was little visual excitement and none at all of the richness of Shakespeare's own age when the actors performed in gorgeous over-the-top costumes. After such a brief encounter, all the audience could do was to clutch their glasses and contemplate that olive.
Atul Kumar
Thomas Cook and the Taj Connemara Hotel presented "The Seduction of Lady Anne" on May 4.
GEETA DOCTOR
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